Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM OCTOBER 2019 46 For the past 25 years, Steve has served as an advisor and consultant on brand strategy, organizational life, and humanized marketing strategy. He has worked with companies such as Samsung, Habitat for Humanity, New Balance, Sony, LG, Amazon, NFL and MLB franchises and is a regular speaker for TEDx, Creative Mornings, CES, HOW Conference, Social Venture Network, American Marketing Association, and AIGA conferences. Steve has published two books, Brand Love and Loyalty and Humanizing the Customer Journey, as well as a forthcoming book, The Evolved Brand: How to Impact the World Through the Power of Your Brand. He has been featured in Business Week, Brand Week, Ad Age, Conscious Company Magazine, MarketingProfs, and HOW magazines. Steve leads his own brand and business strategic consultancy, Mth Degree. Contact: steven@theMthDegree.com, 619-234-1211 or www.theMthDegree.com RO Steven Morris On Brand D uring an executive offsite last month, the company CEO asked me a pointed question. "The biggest challenge we're facing is change – change in the market landscape and change in the ways we recruit, hire and keep our employees engaged. How will this brand program help us address those changes? " Fair question. Here's what I told him. "The heroes in my brand evolution programs are the customers and employees. You need to make it about people and beliefs. Brand is about character and persona – it's a people issue. By mining and activating your beliefs, we'll activate a unique magnetism in your company that will attract and retain the right people." In today's world, profits arrive through portals opened by integrity, cultural belonging, customer loyalty and trust. What defines today's company is active values, brand purpose and brand promise. Edelman's 2018 Earned Brand Report starts with these words: "Today more than ever, consumers are putting their faith in brands to stand for something. To do the right thing. To help solve societal and political problems." Large institutions, including governments, have lost a lot of cultural trust in recent decades. Increasingly, people are turning to businesses to be a guiding light for change. There are lots of C-Suite holdouts who continue to doubt what an evolved brand can do for their bottom line. I've witnessed the skepticism across industry sectors. Business leaders are always looking to connect their brand investment and their short- and long-term health, and rightly so. It's their job, and mine. Brand evolution is about reaching economic goals, too. But along the way, it's a people thing – it's your customers, partners, investors and donors. It's no longer enough for brands just to deliver decent products, look cool and be seen. More than ever, consumers and employees are insisting that brands should represent something larger than themselves. They want to be able to enjoy a personal connection with the beliefs of the brand. They want to belong to it. And if they can't, they'll go elsewhere. The 2018 Earned Brand Report presented some startling stats: • 64% of people believe CEOs should take the lead on change, rather than wait for government to impose it. • 1 in 2 people are belief-driven buyers. They'll choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on social issues. • 67% of people bought a brand for the first time because of its position on a controversial issue. • 60% of people agree that a brand should make it easier for them to see their values and their positions on important issues when they're making a purchase. • 56% of people agree that marketers spend too much time looking for ways to force them to pay attention to their messages, and not enough time thinking of ways to make them want to pay attention. When you take care of people, inside and outside of the business, they'll take care of you. Business leaders typically only take the courageous step of evolving their brand after the pain becomes too difficult to ignore – the loss of market-share, the diminished reputation, and the spectacle of competitors out-evolving their brand and drawing their customers away. WHAT KEEPS LEADERS AWAKE AT NIGHT?

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